


buying in

by van1lla_v1lla1n



Series: succession sprinkles [8]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Bisexual Siobhan Roy, Bisexual Tom Wambsgans, Consensual Infidelity, F/F, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Relationship Discussions, Repression, Sex Work, implicit Willa/Connor, season 2 adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/van1lla_v1lla1n
Summary: Shiv takes advantage of the arrangement, and Tom is taken aback when she suggests he do the same.
Relationships: Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans, Siobhan "Shiv" Roy/Tom Wambsgans, Willa Ferreyra/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Series: succession sprinkles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011780
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	buying in

**I.**

Shiv knew how to pay for things: It was the Roy way to buy your ticket in. Forget a fucking invitation.

In the year after the wedding she took more and more trips she didn’t feel the need to explain to Tom. Often she just spent the weekend at Connor’s, kept him and Willa up late drinking until Connor went to bed, and then she fucked Willa on the kitchen counter with a hand over her mouth. She paid Willa in advance, on the car ride there, and tallied each time they fucked against the automatically generated invoice.

She fucked Willa because she could pay for the need, an equal exchange. She could fuck Willa and enjoy it because at the end of the day Willa didn’t care; once she’d been paid she needed nothing from Shiv. Maybe she used the experience as artistic fodder. That was outside Shiv’s remit.

She couldn’t deny that part of the pleasure was fucking over Connor, who wanted Willa so genuinely. The siblings had always sabotaged each other this way—Connor had escaped the brunt of it with his earlier birth and different mother, but it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it, for all his talk of white helmets.

Maybe it was a bit of self-sabotage, too, fucking over the brother who almost always took her side. Something about the fraternal rivalry gave her that right to his loyalty by default; the half-brother always chose the sister, fellow outsider, over the brothers. But ever since he’d picked up that presidential delusion Shiv couldn’t help herself.

But where Willa was a blank slate, Tom was a black hole of need Shiv could never fill, clingy and desperate and dragging. Shiv saw that same needy desperation in Greg, the same pathetic posturing, and she wondered if he’d learned it from Tom or from his father. He certainly hadn’t learned it from the Roys proper. But Greg, a rightful heir if only by half, carried this air of entitlement, of rightness and security, that was too heavy for Tom even to playact.

**II.**

“You should fuck Greg,” she told Tom over breakfast, like she’d ask for the salt.

“ _Greg_?” Tom asked. “ _Cousin_ Greg?”

“Yeah. Greg. Obviously. Might be good for you to fuck around a little, Wambsgans. Get some spontaneity in your life. See the advantages of the agreement.”

“Why would I fuck Greg? He’s your cousin.”

“So? He’s not _your_ cousin. And anyway you don’t know the half of what the extended family gets up to.”

“Ah, a little Habsburg intrigue, huh?” Tom said, raising an eyebrow.

Shiv grimaced, stabbed a blackberry.

“So, but, just to be clear—you want me to bang, you know, a man?” he asked.

Shiv huffed out a laugh. “What, you think I only fuck men?”

“You what? You fuck women?” Tom sounded genuinely surprised. Amusing.

“And other non-men people.” She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“But you . . . you're—not straight? Shiv!" He set an elbow on the table, a hand gentle on her arm. "Why didn’t you tell me? What the fuck.”

“I don’t know, Tom," she said, leaning back, extracting her arm. "I like to fuck people. Do we have to put a label on it?”

“I mean, I’m totally supportive of course—I’m just wondering why you—”

“I don’t know, Tom. It never came up, you know? Listen, I gotta go if I’m going to make my flight.”

“No, sure,” he said. “Go on, skedaddle.” His face followed her like a flower in too-meager light as she stood up, collected her coat.

“Alright? Talk to you later?” She patted his shoulder, kissed the top of his head, and when she looked back at him from the door he still looked confused. Typically obtuse.

“Alright,” he said. “Love you.” Shiv shut the door and walked out to the waiting car, smirking.

**III.**

“You _figured_ , Greg? What the fuck does that mean?” Tom shifted away from Greg on the couch, clutching a half-empty tumbler, condensation dripping past his fingers.

“I don’t know, man. Straight dudes don’t look at me like that.”

“I don’t know what that means, Greg.” Why did Greg have to be so obscure about all this? “Like what? How do I look at you?”

“Look, dude, if you don’t know, I don’t know how to explain it. Just, like, you looked afraid of me almost? Like I was a threat?”

“That’s because you _were_ a threat, Greg, coming in like you owned the place, with half the family name, and designs on my fucking job.”

“Yeah, but not really? Like, maybe, but also you looked excited about it, you know? Like I was a threat but you liked it—you didn’t actually want me to go away. Which if you _really_ thought I was a threat? At least like that? You might, perhaps, have actually wanted me to go away?”

“I had to keep you under my thumb, Greg. I had to make sure you weren’t going to fuck me. Do you know how hard I’ve worked for this life? A little upper-middle-class pocket square from Saint Paul, pitching a tent on the lawn of one of the richest families in America?”

Greg hummed, blinked, tilted his head. “No, sure, for sure. But then, like, what about the dates and stuff, you know?”

“ _Dates?_ You thought those were _dates_? I know you’re still learning what it’s like to socialize with the elite, Greg, but come on. Friends go out to dinner. It's camaraderie.”

“Yeah, but not like—not like that, really?”

“Like what?” Tom looked at him expectantly, frustrated, but Greg just shrugged. “You know, I just—fuck this, Greg. Who died and made you inquisitor?"

“I’m not—dude, wait, just wait.” Greg stood up, took Tom’s coat out of his hands, folded it back over the arm of the couch. “It’s not, like, bad, that you didn’t know. You just didn’t. Some people don’t. And then, like, they do. And then you just have to sort of recategorize some things in the ol’ noggin until everything fits again.”

“I think I’ve done enough recategorizing lately,” Tom said, refolding his coat. He sat back down, put his head in Greg's lap, and closed his eyes when Greg looked down at him, paying him distinctly un-Roy-like attention. "You fucked up, Greg. It's probably against some gay rulebook to fuck somebody this repressed."

"Some people are into it," Greg said, his face in a cloud of smoke.

"Are you?"

"I thought, like—weren't you done with the recategorizing?"

"Fuck off, Greg," Tom said, and pried the last of the joint from Greg's fingers, let an incurious haze settle into his lungs. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this one half-finished for ages and decided the first day of 2021 was as good a day as any to dust it off ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I'm [on Tumblr](https://van1lla-v1lla1n.tumblr.com/) if you wanna like hang out or whatever :)
> 
> I'm sort of expanding on this idea now into a set of related / more fleshed-out post-s2 one-shots in [this series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/2117133)!


End file.
